Take a wild guess

The walk to the library is busy, the lunch time break/shopping has finished and now there are a lot of porters carrying things around. Furniture, barrels, crates, people were running around with enough materials to assemble entire houses. You had to duck out of the way a few times from how fast the porters were moving. Having the city being so active around you felt alien. You'd only been out and about like this a few times and only once when thing were moving like this. Maybe you'd find Luica performing again.

With that possibility out there, your eyes looked down the streets, trying to spot any crowds gathered. You didn't see any and were a bit disappointed. The last of Lucia's performances you'd seen was at the theater, you didn't count the parade since you only saw the very end of it. She also hadn't asked you to join or help her practice for a while. Maybe you should ask her about that. She is your only platonic friend after all.

Reaching the library you are greeted by a withering glare from the receptionist. "The books here are very valuable."

"Sorry." You said as red rises into your cheeks.

"They require a lot care to ensure they aren't damaged."

"Sorry." You inched your way to the corridor.

"Water damage is a concern this close to the ocean."

"Sorry." You've nearly reached the corridor.

"My husband had to scrub the floor clean."

"Sorry." You called out as you hurried down the corridor.

You hadn't gotten lunch either, maybe Gabrielle would like to come to the academy for dinner, you don't think asking for more bread and cheese would go over well. The door to Gabrielle's room was open but when you looked inside you couldn't find either her or Clare. "Clare? Gabrielle?" You called out.

"Over here." Clare's voice was quiet and further down the corridor. Following it you found an open door with Clare, who seemed to be dying of boredom and Gabrielle who had a new book and was making notes.

"Hey you wanted to -"

"Bye." Clare interrupted, springing up and hurrying out of the room. Gabrielle didn't even seem to notice Clare's exit as her quill kept working on her note book.

"talk to me." You finished walking inside and looked at a few of the books around the room. The titles didn't jump out at you as explanatory of their contents.

"Divine magic, what do you know about it?" She didn't look up or even stop reading.

"Ah, nothing." You read some of her book and it had a familiar ring to it. "Is that the ritual to summon the Mother of All?"

"Yes. It's been performed," she flipped back a few pages in her note book, "More than five hundred times in front of this books author and never had any result." She flicked back to her current page, "However, it has continued unchanged for several centuries so it must have something."

"Did you have divine magic in your previous world?"

Gabrielle's quill twitched. "We aren't there." That seemed like a very definitive 'back off'.

"That ritual," you paused to think about it, "I told you about the Church yesterday and how it only worked because of Clare's sister. If that is what my mother meant by divine magic, she probably would have referenced it more clearly." You didn't know that for sure but it sounded like something she'd do.

"Your mother could have been clearer."

"Oh you have no idea." you looked around the books, "Are all of these religious texts?" You honestly didn't know there were than many.

"Those are all for the Mother of All." She gestured to a bookshelf. "Those rows are Ateera. Those rows Gateon. And that bookshelf," she paused and looked at her notes, "The Resurrected Dragon." She's used her quill to point at all she indicated. "There are also twenty individual texts. All of them contain some form or ritual however only the Mother of All has actual detail." She closed the book she'd been reading over and looked at her notes. "Obviously the interpretations have changed and as you told me mysticism has written over the more overt nature of the ritual. Only a handful of book held any mention of absorbing and expelling other auras."

She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her face. "I guess Clare hasn't been all that helpful then."

"She knows the functions of this worlds magic intimately but absolutely nothing about how or why your mother would classify something as divine and not Goddess magic." Gabrielle stood up and looked at the books still on the shelves. "It's here somewhere. If your mother in this world left a note in one book, she'll probably have left another in the relevant book, we just have to find it."

"I wouldn't be so sure." You were starting to feel guilty on behalf of your mother. "Zara was more of the guiding hand then the just giving the answer." You wonder if your mother had pictured this exact conversation and was grinning ruefully in the past when she did. And now you miss never having to got to know you your mother. You looked around the room at all the books. "You know I never knew there were so many religions. I'd only ever encountered the Mother of All." You started reading the titles of some of the single text scripts.

"The most common and long standing religion. The conflagration during the mythical period inspired several religions but the Mother is the only one to lasted as unchanged as it is."

"Conflagration?" you asked as you picked up and read through some of the books. "Oh when the twenty gods appeared on Calitian and fought." Well that tickled something. "Do you."

"Clare said it was just a coincidence, I wouldn't believe her but these," she pointed at the Mother of All texts, "are not inlighting about the time, just that the Mother won."

"Yeah that's why I found when I read it." You were looking at one of the single text books. "The Cult of Ruten. That's familiar." You grabbed one of the Mother of All texts. "One of the Mother of All's other names is Mother of Ruten." You couldn't find in the book you were looking at so opened another to confirm.

"Yes the Cult seemed to spring up around Ruten's bloodline but it disappeared at some point shortly after it's inception."

You looked at Gabrielle. "Did it now?" You asked. You just so happened to know what might be a descendant of Ruten, in fact you were sleeping with her daughter's consciousness. "What was the Cult's main ideology?" You opened the Cult's book and started reading.

"The author didn't know, its a text written a hundred or so years after the Cult died out. It's more of a reflection on how an Empress used religion to control their people." Gabrielle dismissed it.

"Right." You kept flicking through the pages just in case there was something here. "Any idea where we could find the Cult's text?"

"I didn't know the Cult existed until today. Why are you so curious?"

"Because Ruten's daughter is out and about, sharing a body with, Delilah, one of my childhood friends. Also the reason the Cult might have disappeared is because she was **** to turn into a wraith without a **** contract and they suddenly didn't have a Ruten to follow."

Gabrielle stared at you for a moment. "And your mother?"

"Was," you considered Zara's level of involvement, "mostly responsible for that happening yes."

"And where are they now?"

"I think at the academy, last I saw them they were with Princess Isabelle yesterday."

"Then lets go to the academy." Gabrielle said packing her things into her trunk. "Have you arranged a place for me to stay?"

You thought about it for a second. "Well I know the place that both Clare and Delilah are staying, and I know it's more empty than normal right now." You picked up her trunk and with her beside you left the academy to go Delilah finding.